Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels (42 page)

My aunts claim that my mother was not sick before she left for Thornfield College, the same college I’d won a scholarship to, when she was eighteen years old. They claim she was a normal, bright, happy girl. And that she came home two years later at the Christmas holiday broken and raving, three months pregnant with me.

She’d never explained how she got pregnant, so, of course, I had no idea who my father was. And she’d never recovered.

My aunts insisted that something happened to her at college that destroyed her. I’d spoken to a doctor though, and he assured me that it wasn’t the case. He said that the stress of being away from home must have pushed my mother too far. She was always schizophrenic, he said, it simply hadn’t shown itself yet.

She turned in the direction of the doorway, and she saw me. “Teagan?”

I walked across the room and sat down on the floor next to her. “Hi, Mom.”

She cocked her head at me. “They’ve been here today already.”

“Who has?”

“The snakes,” she said. “They come in through the walls.” She pointed to her pictures of snakes, decorating the area above her bed.

“But they’re gone now,” I said.

She nodded. “I guess so. Or maybe we just can’t see them anymore. Do you see them?”

It was best not to answer questions like that. It made her mad when I told her I couldn’t see her hallucinations. But if I pretended, she wouldn’t believe me and would ask pointed questions about their appearance until she caught me in a lie. So I simply gave her a hug. “I came up to say goodbye, Mom. I’m leaving for college as soon as the car they’re sending shows up.”

“Leaving.” She handed me her crayon. “You should be careful, Teagan.”

“I will, Mom.”

She leaned forward like she was telling me a secret. “What’s yours is always more powerful if it is given than if it is stolen.”

Was that supposed to mean something? I handed her back the crayon. “I’ll miss you.”

She shrugged. She turned back to the floor, where she was coloring in the “A” in Angela.

“Bye, Mom.” I kissed her on top of her head and stood up. I started out of the room.

“Oh, Teagan,” she called after me.

I stopped. “Yeah?”

“They give out free birth control at the health center on campus,” she said. “Take advantage.”

I choked. My mother had never said anything like that to me before. It was a surprisingly lucid thing for her to say. And really embarrassing. “Actually, I’ve been on birth control for years, mom.”

She smiled at me brightly. “Really? Well, then have fun.”

I cringed.

* * *

“This wing is for upperclassmen,” said the girl at the door. She had long red curls, and she was glaring at me.

I’d just climbed up three flights of stairs in an old, dark building with very few windows. The walls were stone, and the air smelled just a touch musty. Now I was standing on the landing and there were three oak doors. The girl was standing in front of one of them. The door to the wing where I was trying to go.

I fumbled to look at the slip of paper I’d been given with my dormitory assignment. “It says I’m on the third floor of Slayton Hall.”

“Well, there’s some kind of mix-up then.”

I peered at the girl. “I remember you. You were at the monologue contest. I remember seeing you while we were all waiting outside for our turn to audition.”

“Yeah, I was there. I’ve been there for three years in a row. I thought that this year, I was going to get the scholarship. Do you have any idea how unlikely it is for them to award it to someone who isn’t even in the program yet?”

Oh. She was angry. I’d beaten her out of the scholarship. “I guess you know who I am.”

She folded her arms over her chest.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Reba Keir,” she said. “And the last I checked, you were a
freshman
, and you didn’t belong in the upperclassmen wing.”

I showed her my assignment paper. “It says I’m living here.”

She huffed.

“Look, I’m sorry you didn’t get the scholarship, and that I did,” I said. “I know how you feel. I’ve been auditioning for things since high school, and when you don’t get things that you want, it’s disappointing.”

“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t try to say that we have things in common. We don’t.” She pointed at me. “You don’t belong here.”

The door opened behind her. “Who are you yelling at, Reba?” said a girl with blonde hair and a cute pug nose.

“Um,” I said, “I think I’m supposed to be on this wing?”

“Are you Teagan?” said the girl.

“Yeah.” She knew who I was. Did everyone know who I was?

She grinned. “I’m Nell. Nell Sutton. I’m your roommate.”

Reba put her hands on her hips. “She’s a freshman, Nell. She can’t live here.”

“She’s an older freshman,” said Nell. She reached out a hand. “Can I take one of your suitcases?”

Reba moved between us. “So what? She’s still a freshman.”

“She’s our
age
. They thought she’d be more comfortable here.” Nell grabbed my suitcase and yanked it back so that it hit Reba’s legs.

Reba leaped out of the way.

I squeezed by her. “It was, um, nice to meet you.”

Nell led me down a hallway. There were identical doors lining it. Each one was thick and heavy, made from dark wood. There was only one window, and it cast a gloomy light over the darkened hallway. “Don’t listen to Reba,” she threw over her shoulder. “She’s a diva in training.”

There were paintings hanging on the walls. One was a landscape, with a crumbling castle against the setting sun. Another was a picture of a bunch of men on horseback, hunting a wild boar. Dogs were leaping at the animal, frozen in midair. I wrinkled my nose.

“You looking at the paintings?” said Nell. “Yeah, they’re weird, right? But they were all painted by Thornfield alumni, so we’re stuck with them.”

I nodded. “Oh, right. Because a lot of successful artists and performers come from this school.” It was one of the reasons why I’d been so pleased to get a full scholarship here. It seemed like Thornfield was the place to go if you wanted to find success in the art world. While actors from Thornfield rarely made it to Hollywood, I’d heard that nearly fifty percent of the actors on Broadway had graduated from Thornfield. Authors, publishers, and gallery owners often had ties to Thornfield as well. I was very fortunate.

She grinned. “Yep. It’s really a great place for networking. Last spring, Thomas Ricter was a guest director, and, of course, Carter Alexander started teaching here last year.”

I knew who Thomas Ricter was, and I’d even heard about his stint as guest director here. “Carter Alexander?”

“Oh, he graduated from here a few years back,” she said. “He directed the premiere of, um... what’s it called? Oh,
Scats and Dreams
.”

My eyes widened. “That was him?” It was a brand new play, but it had taken the Tonys by storm. It was being adapted into a movie now. I’d wanted to go so badly, but, of course, I couldn’t afford it.

“Yeah,” she said. “So, it’s a good school.” She stopped and opened a door. “And this is our room.”

The room contained two beds with wrought-iron headboards, two large desks, and two chests of drawers. One side was covered in open, overflowing boxes.

“I took the left side,” said Nell, “but if you want to switch...”

I stepped inside. “No, it’s fine.”

“We can’t make bunk beds, as you can see.” She gestured to the iron headboards. “But it’s okay, because our rooms are a little bigger up here, and we have our own bathrooms.” She pointed.

There was a door in one corner. I looked inside to see black and white tile, a claw foot tub and a toilet.

“Plus, I totally got us an adorable shower curtain,” she said. “Do you like Disney villains?”

“Um...” I was a little overwhelmed. I was going to live here. Really. I’d somehow made it out of my family home, away from my crazy aunts and my mentally ill mother. This was happening. I smiled at Nell. “Yeah. Absolutely. This is great.”

* * *

I gazed up at the cathedral ceilings in the theater. It was the most gorgeous place I’d ever been in, nothing like the rinky-dink community theater I’d been performing in for years. This theater had been built sometime in the 1700s. It was ornate and opulent. The chairs were red plush, the curtain on the stage the same. The vast expanse of the audience spread out in front of the stage. Eventually, the seats climbed high above, so that sitting on the top row meant an audience member would be peering down at tiny actors. Dripping, jeweled chandeliers hung from the high ceiling to light the theater. But right now it was dark. Only tiny house lights on the wall illuminated its splendor.

I stood with Nell on one of the balconies, looking down on the stage, which looked so small.

“This theater can be hard to fill,” she said. “It really only gets used for the big play in the spring.”

“The musical?” I said. “The one done in tandem with the music department?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It depends on who’s directing. Two years ago it was Bancroft, and he’s a pushover, so none of the theater majors got big roles. But last year when Ricter was the guest director, I got cast.”

“You did?”

She grinned. “Yeah, it wasn’t a big role or anything, but I got to work with him, and it was awesome.”

I looked down at the ornate theater. “This theater is beautiful.”

“Come on, if we go to the other side of campus, I’ll show you the two black box theaters where most of the plays get put on throughout the year. And your classes will be in there too, probably, or in one of the practice spaces.”

“Okay,” I said, following her out.

The outside of the theater building was just as imposing as the inside. Like all the buildings on campus at Thornfield, it was old and stone. The theater was even decorated with gargoyles though. They perched on the edges of the building, grinning madly down on me.

Nell was still talking. “The black boxes are cool because they’re really versatile. Like we can change the configuration of the audience really easily. My freshman year, we did theater in the round all year long, and it was so weird to block.”

“In the round? I’ve never done that.”

We started down a set of ivy-covered stone steps, descending down off the hill where the theater was located. “Oh, it’s so cool. It’s like the audience is everywhere. You feel completely surrounded. It’s a rush.”

“Sounds cool.”

“So, did you mostly do community theater before coming here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve done every Rogers and Hammerstein musical ever produced.”

She laughed. “
The Sound of Music
?”

“Liesl,” I said.

She pointed at herself. “Greta.”

“When you were younger?”

“When I was in high school,” she said. “I was even shorter then. This is the way I look
after
a growth spurt.”

She was fairly short, but I hadn’t thought she was abnormally so. “Short is good, though. I mean, you don’t want to be taller than the male lead.”

She shrugged. “I’m not a lead actress. I don’t even want to be. The way I figure it, the lead is always the most boring character. The villains are always cooler than the heroines.”

I considered.

“Don’t say it,” she said. “I know I’m too cute to be a villain.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” I said.

We reached the end of the steps and waited at a crosswalk to go across the street.

“This way is quicker,” said Nell. She pointed. “You can walk all the way around, and you’re on campus the whole time, but this is a quicker walk. However, it does mean that you have to walk through a little bit of the residential part of town.”

We crossed the road and were on a house-lined street. The houses were stately, with wraparound porches, several stories, and tall, reaching towers. Thornfield’s architecture seemed halted in time, like it had never quite entered the twenty-first century.

“You can see Professor Alexander’s house, too,” she said, pointing.

The house was set back from the street a bit, shrouded in tall, willow trees. Their fronds brushed against the ground. A man was standing on the porch. I couldn’t see his face, but at the sight of him, a jolt went through me.

“Professor Alexander,” I said. “The one you were telling me about.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s him on the porch. He’s young, but he’s tough. I’ve never had him for class, but he was an assistant director for one of the shows I did last year, and he doesn’t hold back. He sent the main actresses home in tears more than once because they weren’t giving him what he wanted.”

I squinted. Why did he look familiar?

He moved forward, out of the shadows, and I saw his face.

I gasped.

It couldn’t be.

He was waving. “Hello there, Miss Sutton.”